The Elusive Bride Read online

  “Don’t let’s quarrel at our wedding feast and spoil the merriment,” he urged.

  He leaned toward Cecily, hoping to distract her capricious temper with another kiss.

  Deliberately, she turned her face away from him. Just as his first bride had done at his first wedding banquet.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cecily’s thoughts reeled in circles, with greater frenzied swiftness than the carol dancers at her wedding banquet.

  Rowan forbade her to come on his expedition to Brantham? It could not be!

  Yet she heard the implacable note of resolution in his voice. Saw the determined set of his features. She knew him well enough to realize her protests would fall on deaf ears. By her own consent, this man was now her husband and lord. If he bade or forbade, she was bound to obey his will.

  A clammy tide of nausea rose in Cecily’s throat. When Rowan stirred to kiss her, as if nothing was wrong, as if her whole world had not turned upside down, she averted her face from him. She had surrendered every weapon save this, and now she feared it was too dull and rusty to be of any use.

  He had tricked her once again, the blackguard!

  In the garden, at daybreak, he had cozened her into believing he cared for her. Throughout the wedding ceremony and the feast, he had deliberately whetted her yearning for him. And all the while, he had no intention of granting her chief due and desire—taking part in the liberation of her home.

  The worst of it was, her traitorous body still ached for this man who had so grossly deceived her. Her imaginings raced ahead to the coming night, reeling between feverish anticipation and cold dread.

  Beside her Rowan talked of the music and the wine, a local potion easily the equal of imported malmsey. Cecily wasn’t certain which vexed her more—his refusal to let her accompany him to Brantham or his thickheaded indifference to her distress.

  When he offered her more food, she refused with a silent head shake, not trusting her agitated stomach to keep it down. When he laughed, she schooled her face to stony indifference. When he touched or kissed her, she held herself aloof, though it cost her a massive effort of will.

  Around them the festivities grew louder and more inebriate. The merriment of the guests seemed to mock her seething outrage even as the riotous activity mirrored her inner turmoil.

  Her conflicting feelings had reached an almost unbearable pitch when Con bellowed, “We will soon be on the march to Berkshire. We should allow the bride and groom as much leisure with one another as they can get betwixt now and then. To the bedchamber!”

  Others of the company took up the cry.

  Cecily’s confusion and curiosity got the better of her spite against Rowan—for the moment. She raised her voice to be heard above the fresh din.

  “I was too young to remember the last wedding I attended—what is Con talking about? What happens now?”

  Rowan flashed her a broad, self-satisfied smile, as though he assumed her temper had dissipated. Cecily fought both the instinctive desire to return his smile and the itch to cuff it off his face with the back of her hand.

  “It appears the time has come for the bedding ceremony, my sweet.” His words sloshed together, like wine in a flagon. He had drunk more deeply tonight than Cecily had ever seen him do.

  Still sober enough to interpret her blank look, he explained. “Anyone who wishes to bear witness will join the procession to our bedchamber. The priest will cense and bless the bed. Then we’ll be disrobed to prove there is no cause upon our bodies for breaking the marriage.”

  The notion that she might yet have one last chance to repudiate this marriage tempted Cecily. It was rapidly overset by the alarming prospect of being stripped naked before the whole company of wedding guests.

  Growing up with four brothers, she had never been the least modest about her body. But that was before Ranulf Beauchamp had bared her backside in front of his man-at-arms and proceeded to thrash away her objections to his marriage offer.

  Since coming to Brantham, she had kept her wounds clean and poulticed. From what she could tell without being able to see clearly, the broken skin had knit satisfactorily and the bruises had faded. In short, the physical damage had healed quickly and completely. The harm to her spirit had festered.

  “To bed! To bed!” clamored the wedding guests.

  Cecily found herself drawn to her feet and swept out of the great hall on a tide of Rowan’s laughing, staggering kinfolk. Down the gallery they surged and up the winding, narrow stairs to his bedchamber.

  The remains of a small fire glowed in the hearth. A single taper burned in its sconce, but several of the guests had borne candles or torches from the hall. They provided plenty of light to expose Cecily’s naked body to prying eyes. Shadows congregated in the corners, though, ready to swoop down and engulf the room once she and Rowan were alone.

  The chamber smelled of fresh bed herbs, rapidly overpowered by the aromatic smoke issuing from the priest’s censer. Aenor threw back the bedcovers and the commotion quieted long enough for the old man to mumble a prayer and swing the smoking bronze globe by its chains over the bed.

  At the sound of the “Amen” the women promptly fell on Cecily and the men on Rowan, stripping away their wedding finery with fumbling hands. Stunned into unaccustomed passivity, Cecily made no protest against the disrobing, though her whole face and body prickled with a fierce, hot blush.

  She overheard several ribald jests from the men, which were greeted with gusts of shameless laughter. Baron DeCourtenay’s loudest of all.

  When the crowd parted to give bride and groom a chance to survey one another, Cecily saw the cause of their mirth. Rowan’s lust for her towered for all to see. Cecily’s eyes widened as she contemplated his size.

  From the temporarily hushed company came one guest’s befuddled, though clearly admiring prediction. “The lass’ll be walking bandy-legged for a week!”

  After a gale of lusty laughter, several of the guests vied with one another for the lewdest jest. Did they intend to mortify her to death?

  When Aenor finally intervened, Cecily could barely restrain herself from clasping her sister-in-law to her heart.

  “Enough, now! Enough, I say!” Aenor scolded. “Do you want them to catch their deaths of the ague standing naked in this cold draft? Rowan, do you see any cause upon the body of Cecily Tyrell to break the marriage?”

  “Quite the contrary,” he replied. One expressive brow quirked and the eye beneath it twinkled with wanton glee.

  Cecily’s knees quaked, though she could not decide whether from trepidation or the hot, sweet thrill that suddenly ran through her.

  “Your manhood speaks quite eloquently for you, Brother,” Aenor quipped wryly. “Cecily,” she continued. “Do you see any cause upon the body of Rowan DeCourtenay to break this marriage?”

  Cecily drew a deep breath. Here was her chance to repudiate him if she wished. Seamed in places with old battle scars, he was not an unblemished specimen. Cecily’s pride urged her to disappoint and shame him as he had disappointed and shamed her.

  “I…”

  Her sense of duty pleaded for restraint. The most important consideration was that Brantham be relieved—not by whom. That Fulke DeBoissard get his comeuppance—not at the point of whose dagger it happened. This was what she had come to Brantham seeking, before treacherous passion had obscured her aim.

  “I find no fault with him.” She stared at a point on the wall a few inches above Rowan’s head.

  “Then God bless you and make you fertile.” Aenor led Cecily to the bed.

  Rowan needed no help from the men to find his way there.

  Clutching the bedclothes, Cecily drew them up to cover herself.

  “Leave them in peace now.” With some help from the Welshman, Aenor herded the guests out of the chamber, reminding them of the food and drink they’d left behind in the hall.

  When she’d finally shooed the last one out, she cast Rowan a final glance. “If you have any sense, you�
�ll bar this door behind me, lest those fools take it into their sodden pates to come serenade you later on.”

  “I know good advice when I hear it, Sister,” Rowan called after her. Bolting from the bed, he secured the chamber door.

  Cecily kept her eyes downcast, resisting the insistent urge to gape at her bridegroom’s naked body. He did not return straight to bed, but made one slight detour to snuff the flickering flame dancing above the tallow candle in the wall sconce.

  Deep, black shadows reclaimed the tower room, relieved only by the faint ruby glow of the hearth embers. As Rowan approached the bed once again, Cecily succumbed to her urge for a swift glance at him. She saw a lithe, predatory specter, its midnight silhouette edged in a blood-red sheen. When he reached for her, Cecily instinctively drew back from his touch.

  He did not allow her initial aversion to daunt him. Instead, he made a swift lunge, pinning her beneath him. His mouth closed over hers, silencing any protest.

  As he kissed her with all the pent-up passion that had sprouted at their first meeting and ripened with each day and night of their journey together, Cecily struggled to recall why she must not give herself to him willingly.

  He had betrayed and deceived her.

  Hadn’t he?

  Every time she’d been daft or reckless enough to place her trust in him, he had proven himself an archfraud. Yet for all he abused her wary faith in him, he adamantly refused to place any faith in her. He did not trust her with the dark secrets of his past. He did not trust her with the innocent company of his closest comrade. On the road from Brantham, he had not trusted her even with the truth of his identity.

  As Rowan DeCourtenay worked his sensual enchantment on her, those damning indictments dwindled in Cecily’s thoughts, like baying of hounds in speedy retreat. Against all reason, her body responded to his touch—sure, yet tender. His kisses tasted of the rich, potent Gloucestershire wine laced with the overripe musk of desire.

  Wherever his skin pressed against hers or whispered over it, Cecily’s alternately seared or tingled with a delicious chill. In spite of everything he’d done, she wanted him. How had she let him gain such terrifying power over her?

  She wished he would slow down. Explain to her what he was doing and why. Tutor her in the arts and graces of the bedchamber. Instead, he seemed possessed of that wild demon that drove mating he-creatures. The bull, the ram, the stallion.

  As he employed his knee to wedge her thighs apart, Cecily remembered his size and the disquieting advice of his matronly cousin before the wedding.

  Wresting her lips free of his, she gasped the only words she could think of to penetrate his consuming passion. “Use me gently. I am a maid.”

  Like some mystic incantation, her words arrested Rowan in midtouch, midkiss. For a long, still moment of breathless hush, he hovered above her, poised to claim her virginity. Then he shook his head, as if waking from a deep trance, and rolled away from her.

  “Damned if I will use you at all!” he hissed. Rising from the bed, he retrieved some articles of clothing, thrusting arms into sleeves with violent force. “Stay a maid for aught I care! Go back to the nunnery or take a dozen lovers—it matters not to me. I will hie me to Berkshire as soon as it is light and liberate that benighted keep of yours, so I may be free of you at last!”

  The volume of his voice was low, but the savage rage in his tone unnerved Cecily more than an angry bellow. Being so suddenly and furiously deprived of his touch when he had roused her body to a fever of desire brought galling tears of frustration to her eyes. What was it about her brief protest that had so thoroughly doused her bridegroom’s ardor, turning it to fierce loathing?

  “Rowan?” The word came out a choked squeak. Sitting up in bed, she pulled the covers up to shield her naked body and tried again. “Rowan, what is wrong? Why are you doing this?”

  Whether he did not hear or simply refused to answer, she was not certain. She heard him stalk into the adjoining wardrobe and shortly return bearing something that clinked softly, like rings of chain mail.

  Did he truly mean to muster his wine-addled troops and ride for Brantham at dawn?

  Cecily sensed she should welcome this bizzare turn of events. After all, it would mean the swifter liberation of her home and her people. Somehow, that notion was cold comfort as she sat in her empty marriage bed, maidenhood intact, listening to her bridegroom depart.

  Would he ever return to claim her? And could she survive the heartbreak if he did not?

  Use me gently. I am a maid.

  Those words, from the lips he longed to drown in, ate at Rowan’s heart with the caustic intensity of quicklime.

  All day, long-buried memories of his first wedding had worked their way close to the surface of his thoughts. He had struggled to ignore them by concentrating on his desire for Cecily. His long-abstinent body had willingly collaborated to hold his painful past at bay.

  It had helped that his second bride bore no resemblance to his first. The rich chestnut waves of her hair crowned with late blooming flowers put him in mind of a wild forest sprite. Her restless grace and zest for life drew him like fresh air and sunshine drew the prisoner from his dungeon.

  Though he’d vaguely noticed her eagerness wane during the bridal feast, he could not fathom the cause of it. Surely she did not expect him to indulge her dangerous whim to accompany his fighting force to Brantham? On sober reflection, she must see the reckless peril in which it would place the expedition. She would be a precarious distraction for him. And if Fulke DeBoissard should chance to lay hands on her, the whole enterprise would be forfeit.

  No. Cecily’s sudden coolness must have some other grounds. Perhaps she still harbored doubts about her own desirability, difficult as that was to credit. Well, he would show her desire. Ravenous, consuming, white-hot desire.

  The wine and the earthy foolery of the bedding ceremony had fueled his craving, until he could focus on nothing save his bride. The beguiling music of her voice. The intoxicating perfume of her scent. The bewitching silk of her hair and skin.

  Like an evil enchantment, her words had thrust him back into a haunted past, with an unwilling woman struggling beneath him. In the space of a heartbeat, he relived the wrenching hour that had marred his life and stained his soul ever after. Once again he plumbed the depths of its anguish.

  If he trod that thorny path afresh in his mind, he would not go there again in body. He was no longer a green boy, slave to the voracious dictates of his virgin loins.

  With every precious ounce of self-control he had cultivated since then, Rowan wrenched himself off the woman. His fevered mind could not decide whether she was Cecily…or Jaquetta? He only knew he must put as much distance between them as possible while his tenuous restraint held.

  Words retched out of him—like bile from a heaving stomach emptied of everything else. Or poison from a festering wound broken open. He scarcely understood their meaning. Perhaps they had none but to channel his pain into manly wrath and signal his intention to flee from her.

  Before it was too late for them both.

  He fumbled on the floor for something with which to cover himself.

  How could he have been such a fool as to think he could bury the past and make a fresh start? This disastrous night had proven it would always lurk near the surface, ready to erupt at the least provocation. To blight anything new he tried to plant above it.

  No! His robes were not enough. He needed the comforting weight of his armor to shield him.

  To the wardrobe he staggered in a daze, gathering by blind touch his greaves and birnie. From the bed he heard the woman speak, but her words made even less sense to him that his own. He could not afford to pause and puzzle them out, lest her nearness prove too great a temptation and he fall once again into grave sin.

  Fearing that she might approach him when she got no answer, Rowan unbarred the door with fumbling hands. Then he gathered up his armor and bolted from the room. His demons were on the loose and in full c
ry at his heels as he dashed down the steep narrow stairs of the tower.

  A few hours later, Rowan came back to his senses. Or returned to sobriety. He was not certain which.

  He only knew his men were preparing to ride and march at dawn. None too happily. Con had exhorted him to abandon the idea—give them at least a day to recover from their overindulgence at the bridal banquet. Rowan’s pride would not allow him to retreat from his folly. Particularly not at the Welshman’s behest.

  So he wandered through the bailey, scowling fiercely at any fool daft enough to voice a complaint or make mouths in his presence.

  “You, there, look to your mount!”

  “Is that siege engine tied down tight enough to withstand the journey? Are the axles well greased?”

  “That bow doesn’t look properly strung to me.”

  He could feel their eyes upon his back, resentful and curious. Resentful of being pulled from their revels at the height of the merriment. Curious as to what had had befallen him in his marriage bed to make him forsake it so quickly.

  Let them wonder.

  Rowan rubbed his throbbing temples, then pulled a hand down his bearded jaw. A great yawn shuddered out of him. Though he longed for the oblivion of sleep, it would have to wait until they stopped to make camp, much later in the day.

  Almost against his will, he glanced up at the north tower. A faint light flickered from the tiny window of his bedchamber.

  Cecily was awake, too.

  Into his fatigue-muddled mind flashed the words he had flung at her when he’d fled their bridal bed. Clearer now than when he had originally uttered them, they gouged his heart like so many jagged blades.

  What wounds had they inflicted upon her?

  How could Cecily understand that he had only lashed out as a means of defense and escape? Not against her, but against bitter, unfaceable memories she had unwittingly evoked in him. It was not her fault she’d been unable to save him. The past held him in too tight a thrall. He’d been wrong to place such impossibly high expectations upon her. Particularly since he hadn’t armed her with the knowledge of how noxious and ruthless an enemy she must contend with for mastery of his soul.